Jordan Monroe helped co-found Owlet, a sock that measures a baby's heart rate and blood oxygen, and is designed to lessen some that stress new parents often feel about their newborn. But Monroe, currently the company's chief innovation officer, wants to lessen that stress even more — imaging a way everyone, not just new parents, could quantify their angst, and figure out what really makes them feel better, and do more of that every day. That's been a big focus for Monroe in his personal life as well, learning to shut down his devices, spend time outside — and make sure a smartwatch never touches his wrist.
With two toddlers of his own, Monroe looks for ways to strip the stress from life, whether that's off-roading and spending more time outside, removing distractions at home, or looking forward to new tech that will help us spend more time on what we love.
Owlet's Jordan Monroe and his 13 Questions
2. Snap your fingers, and any device — past or present — could appear. It would be a device that can could objectively measure happiness and stress in a person potentially via cortisol and the endocannabinoid systems. I feel that we humans are often unaware that we chase things that make us unhappy and stressed. Happiness is measured only subjectively, such as asking someone how they feel. What if we could objectively know what things are good and bad for our mental and emotional wellbeing on an individual and collective basis?
3. My perfect smart and intelligent home would be able to....watch my two toddlers in the morning so I could get two more hours of sleep. It would guide them to the toy room, open up new toys for the morning, and give them treats if they don't fight and clean up after themselves.
4. Flip phone or smart phone?Smartphone made dumb. I have all social push notifications turned off and I use the Screen Time feature to basically shut off my phone when I get home so I can be with my wife and kids without distraction.
5. Tech I'm most excited to see in 2040 are... Self-driving vehicles. We will save lives, save time, and reduce massive amounts of stress. This tech can't come fast enough!
6. Morning person or night owl? Lifetime night owl switched to morning person three years ago. I find I don't do anything productive from 10 pm to midnight but I am hyper productive from 6 am to 8 am.
7. Smartwatch or analog? Neither! I love having a clean wrist. I set alarms on my phone for any meeting I need to get to and then I try to spend the rest of my time hyper focused.
8. My favorite way to get to work is a Boosted board but if I could use a drone taxi I would.
9. The tech device I wish I could give up? Email is the biggest time suck and distractor. I wish we could all just agree to stop using email.
10. I wish they had named the Internet of Things .....remote access devices. That is really what all IoT devices do is give you a single use case that you can remotely access from your phone or other internet device. Almost a decade since we started using IoT we are still so far from devices being able to intelligently and securely speak and react to one another to make our lives better.
11. Best invention of the past 20 years? The smartphone is a hard one to beat. I can now accomplish more from my toilet than I could with some of the top technology on my desktop 20 years ago.
12. Favorite book or movie I saw in 2019 was a book called "Why We Sleep" and it was my favorite [because] since then I have taken my sleep so much more seriously and I have noticed major improvements in my mood, productivity, and ability to recover from physical stress.
13. Three things we did better as children than we do now are....play outside, scratch our knees and roam free.
Owlet Smart Sock + Cam - Heart Rate, Oxygen, Video & Audio - The Complete Baby Monitor Solution
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